Links: KDevelop 4.0.1, GNOME 3...
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-07-24 07:32:48 UTC
- Modified: 2010-07-24 07:33:50 UTC
Summary: GNU/Linux news roundup
GNU/Linux
The Playstation 3 slim is not just a gaming console, but also a powerful PC besides the styled layout that the playstation 3 has. Everybody generally use the console for it?s main objective, to perform video games, with out realizing how significantly more the console can offer them . With Linux on Playstation 3 you can do almost everything a computer can do and then some with your Ps3. Not to mention installing Linux system on a Playstation 3 is very effortless. Here are some of the benefits linked with setting up Linux system on a Playstation 3 slim.
This is an old favorite of mine. Here is the problem, switching desktops on a Linux machine with or without compiz is not intuitive. Why? because it is related to some window keys Ctrl+Alt+Right or Left Arrow, it is a secondary menu, or it depends on the mouse being at the corner of the window.
Defragmenting the hard drive. It's hard to believe that even Windows 7, the latest operating system from Microsoft, is still prone to this problem. The NTFS filesystem (used by Windows NT and up) has other quirks, but it seems to slowly get fragmented and requires defragmenting from time to time. This process can take a long time depending on your hardware, and no doubtedly has to happen when you are not using your computer. It's more like a band-aid to the problem, whereas Linux solves the problem up front by not even allowing fragmenting to happen at all. This has been the case since the ext3 filesystem was first used for Linux, and is still the case today with the ext4 filesystem. To quote the Linux System Administrator Guide: "Modern Linux filesystem(s) keep fragmentation at a minimum by keeping all blocks in a file close together, even if they can't be stored in consecutive sectors. Some filesystems, like ext3, effectively allocate the free block that is nearest to other blocks in a file. Therefore it is not necessary to worry about fragmentation in a Linux system.". Again, this is brilliant.
So let's look at two of the most common operating systems used today used in datacenters and on server systems. On one hand, Windows and the other Linux.
Windows by nature has more downtime per system, because Microsoft releases patches that require frequent rebooting. Windows patches are scheduled to be released on the second Tuesday of each month, so at a minimum once per month Windows systems will need to reboot. Sometimes, patches are released even more frequently, depending on the severity. Windows just can't activate a majority of software updates without rebooting the entire system.
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Server
- Over two thirds (29 out of 42) of the most reliable hosting companies use Linux (would they use GNU along with it?)
- 14.2% use BSD (FreeBSD to be more precise)
- A little less than 10% use Windows
- 3 out of 42 are a big question mark
The z196 can be configured to include up to 80 specialty engines to further reduce costs and increase performance including the System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) for integrating Java workloads with core business applications, the System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) designed to help free-up computing capacity and lower IT costs, and the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) to optimize Linux workloads running on the mainframe, IBM said in its press release.
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Graphics Stack
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Applications
Why do I care about this so much? Because I have music playing whenever I'm using this computer, and when you add up work plus free time, I'm at this computer 8-10 hours per day. Music keeps me sane during multi-hour debug sessions. Music is an integral part of my life, and a music app is an integral part of playing music.
It's very important to me that the programs and tools I use all day are comfortable. Otherwise I become cranky. If you were a carpenter, would you want to use a hammer with a wobbly handle all day? I'm a programmer, and I want to use comfortable computer programs.
Clementine is very comfortable.
A library management system (also known as an integrated library system) is an automated resource planning system which enables a library to operate efficiently, freeing staff from unnecessary tasks. This type of software typically offers functionality such as cataloging, searching, reporting, acquisitions, library circulation and management embodied into a central system.
A student information system (also known as a student management system or school management system) is computer software for educational institutions to manage student data.
We continue our Linuxables series on the Linux text editor. As you might have noticed, this is one of those topics that breed much contempt. If you talk about vi, you must give equal time to emacs. If you talk about Kate, you best talk about Gedit. And that is precisely where we are - Gedit (although we have yet to talk about Kate, that comes next week).
[...]
By default Gedit will be installed on a GNOME desktop.
GSmartControl is a really useful Linux app to check the health of your hard disk drive. GSmartControl is basically a graphical user interface for smartctl, which is a tool for querying and controlling SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data on modern hard disk drives. Only ATA drives including both PATA and SATA are supported for now.
Ear Candy Automatically Fades and Raises Volume Levels in LinuxLinux only: Free utility Ear Candy makes your sound system smarter. If you're listening to music and a Skype call comes in, or you load a YouTube video, Ear Candy gently lowers your music volume to let the other sounds through.
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Proprietary
More than two years after version 1.0 arrived and about one month behind schedule, the Wine Project development team have released version 1.2 of their Windows API implementation. Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is free open source software that allows users to run Windows applications on Linux and Unix by providing its own native replacements for Windows DLLs. According to Wine Project leader Alexandre Julliard, Wine 1.2 represents more than 23,000 changes, including over 3,000 bug fixes, and includes a number of improvements and new features.
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Instructionals
Retouching your photos in digiKam is radically different from how it works in Aperture. In digiKam, you first have to open the image Editor. In the image Editor, you can select from the top menu the different manipulations that you apply to your photo. You pick one manipulation that you want to do and on the right side of the window, the controls for this particular manipulation appear. Here you can adjust the settings. For some tools, the changes are displayed straight away, for the more computing extensive tools you have to press the “try” button to see the effect. DigiKam has made it easy to check what the effect of the adjustment is going to be: there are four split screens available and there is a mouse over option available that shows the original or the adjusted photo depending on where your mouse is. You can select the behaviour of the Image Editor on the bottom right corner. In that same corner, you also find the apply button, which probably does not need any explanation!
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Desktop Environments
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K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)
I’m happy to announce the availability of our first patch level release for KDevelop 4.
Well, here comes a good one I think. As I was talking to some people on the KDE IRC channel yesterday, there was a comment made about a possible way to orient new KDE users on how to use the desktop. However, I believe that users should be left clues to discover their desktop on their own. There should not be an intro popup or anything like that. Ponder about this for a moment.
Today, the KOffice team presents a contest to create great KPresenter slide templates, offering t-shirts for the winners and of course inclusion in the next KPresenter releases for all good submissions. Read on for information on the contest!
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GNOME Desktop
This September, a new desktop will be unveiled to the world in the form of GNOME 3. This desktop will change the way people view, work with, and think of the desktop. It's different, it's intuitive, and it follows the current evolution of what the desktop should be. But best of all, it's all about Linux.
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I have owned a Victorinox USB flash drive for several years now - long enough that it is only a 512MB unit, and it was considered "typical" at the time that I got it. I recently decided it was time to get a new one with a capacity more typical by today's standards. My basic selection criteria was very simple - besides the capacity, it must not have any knife or scissors which would cause me problems when taking it in my backpack on commercial flights.
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Reviews
Parted Magic is a Slackware-based Linux distro which is made for the sole purpose of partitioning hard disks. Parted Magic comes with tools like GParted, TestDisk, fdisk etc. The latest release, Parted Magic 0.5 was released yesterday and it includes Linux kernel 2.6.34.1, GParted 0.6.1 etc.
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New Releases
After several years of development, German T2 creator Rene Rebe has announced the release of version 8.0 of his cross compiling Linux distribution System Development Environment (SDE), T2 SDE. According to Rebe, the latest release includes more than 10,000 Subversion revisions, hundreds of new packages, performance improvements and several new features.
The Sabayon Linux team has now released two new flavours of the Gentoo-based Linux distro packed with alternative desktop environments for those who prefer them or have slower computers. The Sabayon 5.3 XFCE and Sabayon 5.3 LXDE ‘spins’ are more experimental in nature than the regular release though they are considered stable enough for regular use. This is just the first step, more spins are planned, and these two will continue to evolve until they reach a more mature state.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
Flavours and Variants
Some love Gnome, others love KDE, for me it’s XFCE all the way. When I jumped on the Ubuntu bandwagon several years ago it was only natural that I’d use Xubuntu.
If you’re looking for a great KDE distribution built on Ubuntu packages, Linux Mint KDE is the one to get. Forget Kubuntu, Mint does everything it does and more. In fact, it’s everything Kubuntu used to be. By itself, Mint’s KDE edition shines with custom tools, a customized appearance, and attention to detail at just about every turn. Distributions like this one make it harder for me to choose a single distro to stick with, as there are many great ones out there to try out.
[...]
Overall: 5/5 (Great!)
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Phones
I caught an excellent presentation by Aaron Williamson from the Software Freedom Law center here at OSCON yesterday examining why smartphones built on open source software aren’t as open as they possibly could be. What Williams talked about was often eye opening, though there were a few points I found myself disagreeing with him on.
He started the presentation by talking about Motorola’s Droid X and the controversy that was stirred up when hacking enthusiasts discovered that Motorola had implemented an encrypted boot loader that forced the device to boot into a “recovery” mode in the event a custom ROM was detected on the device. While this was shocking (and even infuriating) to some, The only thing setting Motorola apart from the other Android OEMS in this case is that they’re actually enforcing the restrictions mandated by the OS maker.
Mobile photography could get a shot in the arm thanks to the combined efforts of Stanford University researchers and Nokia Research, who have pushed a new open-source digital photography platform out the door. FCam – or “Frankencamera” – is initially available for the Nokia N900, and unlocks high-end functionality like RAW image capture, full manual controls and low-light imagery through combining multiple shots of varying ISO and exposure settings.
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Android
In two reports filed from this week's OSCON conference, The Register says that Google will open Android's internal development kit to contributors, and that Linux maintainers are holding tough in negotiating with the search giant regarding Android's readmission to the kernel. Meanwhile, Linux 2.6.35 RC6 was released, featuring enhancements to network scalability, memory management, and sleep-wait detection.
Interest levels in syncing music collections have notched up a bit of late with the introduction of a plethora of new Android-based super phones. That is, unless you happen to be one of those owners with a large quantity of digital music encumbered by digital rights management (DRM) better known as copy protection. In that case, you might want to do some research into converting said digital files into a more portable format. Meanwhile, for the rest, with media ready to load up on a new cool phone, we'll take a look at Linux options.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- EPO Staff Union: The Strike Actions and Other Industrial Actions "Have Already Delivered Measurable Gains."
- SUEPO Munich has just issued a statement to staff
- Based on Insider Leaks, Asha Sharma's Job is to Kill XBox While Talking About "AI"
- They cite SneakerSO
- Linux Kernel 7.0 Release Candidate Comes Out, Stallman Turns 73 in Three Weeks
- It predates Microsoft and Apple
- In Greenland, Firefox's Gecko and KHTML (KDE, But Bastardised by Apple) Bigger Than Chrome
- Are those Danes recognising the risk of monoculture?
- IBM Layoffs Definitely Still Happening
- Contrary to what some apologists try to say
- Don't Use the Future Tense to Discuss the Slop Bubble
- Wall Street does not react to reality; it reacts to panic, which is related to expectations
- The Broken Window Industry and Its Ongoing Desires to Make Technology Less Dependable
- Reliable computing is becoming harder to find
- New XBox CEO Typecast in Social Control Media
- Microsoft apologists will fall back on (or shuffle between) the "racist" and "sexist" angle
- Sites Without JavaScript Deserve Your Visits
- We're not arguing that the Web should be as simple or barebones like Gemini Protocol/GemText
- EPO Strikes Are Already Working
- Campinos is already going "into hiding"
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- Slop (So-called 'genAI') is Not a Skill, Slop Gets You Suspended or Even Sacked, It Can Eventually End Your Career
- Benj Edwards, a so-called 'Senior' so-called 'AI' so-called 'Reporter'
- Quitting Reddit (Social Control Media Controlled by Conde Nast)
- There is a new post in Reddit
- There is No Such Thing as "AI Skills", "AI Competency", "AI Fluency" Etc.
- Slop does not give anybody an advantage
- Links 23/02/2026: "What Boston Will Cost Me" and Women as Hostages
- Links for the day
- IRC Usage Levels Seem to be Rebounding This Year
- it looks like the total count (tally) of users increased a lot lately
- Microsoft Tricked the Media Into Lying About Microsoft Layoffs in January. Now It Does the Same (in February).
- Microsoft has got the media by the wallet (or balls)
- Free Software Projects Become Slow Due to Slop
- It does not improve efficiency or productivity, it reduces both
- EPO Strike Has Begun (or Resumed)
- The EPO status quo is untenable
- Links 23/02/2026: US Surrenders to Climate Change (to Benefit Oil Companies and Slop), UK Court of Appeal to Hear Mazur
- Links for the day
- GAFAM Jobs No Longer Lucrative
- Those days are long gone
- Germans Recognise the Contagion is Digital, Not Racial
- How to dismantle or neutralise those weapons? Turn them off
- Free Software (or Software Freedom) Ain't No Religion
- It's hardly surprising that some of the loudest opponents of Software Freedom and its luminaries also disregard or bend facts
- Dr. Andy Farnell Explains Why the Slop Industry is Like Trespassers and Thieves
- interesting new article about robots.txt files
- The Demise of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and Profession Based Around Bullying With SLAPPs and Empty Threats
- For press to survive and thrive in the UK we need the hired gun to be submerged
- Gemini Links 23/02/2026: Imperfect Journal, Evil, and "Progress Goes Boing!"
- Links for the day
- “Power is a Thing of Perception. They Don't Need to be Able to Kill You. They Just Need You to Think They are Able to Kill You” ― Julian Assange
- When leadership becomes corrupt enough to lose a sense of authority its days are numbered; it'll be replaced
- IBM Has Already Admitted 2026 Mass Layoffs (in 4Q Earnings Call)
- We showed this earlier this month, but some people bring that up again
- Reasons to Go on Strike in the European Patent Office (EPO)
- If you live in Europe and don't work for the EPO, you can still help
- First speech of Chanellor Hitler, Andreas Tille & Debian denounce Branden Robinson
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 22, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, February 22, 2026
- More and More Projects Quit Microsoft GitHub This Year, XBox Will See the Same
- Microsoft GitHub's embrace of slop as "strategic" gives us a clue of what'll happen to XBox very soon
- Google "Intelligence": Despite Slam-Dunk or "Smoking Gun" Proof, Drug Abuse in EPO Leadership is "Unverified Allegations"
- Google's slop (so-called 'AI') lacks intelligence
- 8,000 Pages/Articles Per Year
- We're eager to maintain a good production/publication pace and illuminate the sinister attempts to interfere with Freedom of the Press in the UK
- Gemini Links 22/02/2026: Okonomiyaki and Midcrunch Crisis
- Links for the day
- Freedom Means Accepting He or She Who is Different
- In the Debian community we're sadly seeing some authoritarian overreach this month
- Microsoft Windows Falls to Another New All-Time Low in Guatemala, It is a Bottomless Pit
- Maybe users come to realise that Windows means back doors and those doors are open to a regime that ought not be trusted
- "XBox" Will Become Slop After Mass Layoffs
- When all else fails, "AI it"
- Links 22/02/2026: Hardware Price Hikes Across the Board, "Microsoft Issues Statement on Potential Layoffs"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft "Layoffs Incoming"
- This transition isn't about promoting games; it's about canning the console
- Links 22/02/2026: "Bloat of Modern Fitness Apps" and Wikipedia Deprecates Archive.today
- Links for the day
- Our IRC 5-Year Anniversary (for Self-Hosted) is Fast Approaching
- A week from now it's March already
- Gemini Links 22/02/2026: Dream Job Gone and Slop in Taskwarrior
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 21, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, February 21, 2026
- GNU/Linux Grew a Lot in Nicaragua
- We've not noticed until today
- Techrights Has Over 1,000 Good Articles 'in the Tank'
- Drafts, notes, and lengthy documents
- New Article Challenges Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for Choosing the Wrong SLAPP Cases to Investigate
- The one point we can agree on is that SRA does not know how to correctly select the worst culprits/offenders
- The Brand 'Watsonx' is a Terrible Name for IBM 'Hey Hi' (Chatbots) Because Watson Agreed With Adolf Hitler
- Almost a century has passed and IBM still believes that selling "intelligence", chatbots in particular, should be done under the name "Watson"
- Why IBM is Still Scary and Dangerous
- Keep a distance from "Big Blue" Bully
- Measuring the Growth of Our Mission and Community
- Something between experiment and prototype
- Richard Stallman in the United States - Part III - Georgia Tech Did a Fine Job Upholding Free Speech Principles
- The real problem was social control media (toxic)
- Debian's Master is Deleting Criticism of SystemD and Other Things (On-Topic and Published by Debian Developers), Resorts to the Excuse Messages Are "Too Long"
- Censorship serves nobody except the masters that control this censorship
- Digg's Latest Incarnation Already Failed, It's Infested With LLM Slop
- Many submissions go to slopfarms and some get summarised by slop
- Gemini Links 21/02/2026: Veganism and DeskPi RackMate T0
- Links for the day
- On The Web, XBox Already a Dying Breed
- Down to about 0.05% on large machines, based on statCounter [...] Microsoft will never publicly admit or say how many billions it lost on the XBox
- 2026 a Year of 'Top-Down' Microsoft Layoffs (Management First)
- Stay tuned for what comes next
- Your "Likes" Aren't Yours and They're Mostly "Worthless Clicks"
- Social hermits are not popular, irrespective of how many "Facebook friends" or "likes" they get
- Waggener Edstrom/Frank Shaw Lied, There Are Definitely Microsoft Layoffs
- Microsoft never issued a formal statement, it made allusions by proxy
- Microsoft-Controlled Media With Embargo and Press Operatives
- This won't be the last example of media manipulation for narrative control or face-saving "damage control"
- Slop Hype Makes Our Core Technology Less Reliable and Far Less Resilient (We Pay for the Catastrophe That Follows)
- Only slop-free projects can be trusted
- Going for 1,000 (Days of Uptime)
- universal records are vastly better
- Firefox is No-Go in China, Not Even 1% "Market Share" Anymore
- Given Mozilla's utterly rubbish marketing these days (politics over technical aspects), set aside the cheerleading for slop, there's hardly a chance of Mozilla Firefox reaching or exceeding 10% again
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part III - It's in His Eyes
- Workers are free to draw their own conclusions
- Links 21/02/2026: Tensions Over Iran and Illegal Cheeto Tariffs, Presidential Approval Sags
- Links for the day
- Links 21/02/2026: "Moving Away From Cloudflare", Many Layoffs or Shutdowns in Games (Including XBox/Microsoft)
- Links for the day
- GNU Linux-libre is a Grown-Up Today
- "before that, every distro that wanted to respect its users' freedom had to remove itself all of the binary blobs that were distributed as part of the kernel Linux's so-called sources"
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 20, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, February 20, 2026
- Gemini Links 21/02/2026: "The Evil of Action" and Slop Bots Causing Great Harm Online (Not Just the Web)
- Links for the day